"And this is where we run into the first bit of craziness. Amazon decided that they should model the Alexa app store after the iPhone app store. So there is a certification process to get your app into the store. But think about the difference: you are not uploading a binary file to the Alexa app store, you are simply registering an URL. So Amazon has no real control over your software. You could get an app approved, and then you could swap out the app for any other app, and the Certification team at Amazon would never know. They don’t control your code. Your code is not in their store, so they have no control over what you do. And yet they modeled this process after the iPhone store, where Apple does have control over your app."
But that doesn't get at how crazily broken the certification system. You have to read the quotes from the other developers to understand that.
As for the effectiveness of that control, there's little practical difference between "simply registering an URL" and uploading a binary; both can load external content or be modified (in terms of what the user actually sees/experiences) almost entirely after the initial review. There will always be apps that try to abuse that possibility, and they usually get reported or re-evaluated, but it's probably a very small number of apps that will do that.
The point is to simply filter out a larger number of spammy, malicious, or otherwise offensive apps at the onset rather than spending more resources constantly monitoring everything after the fact. That said, it's unfortunate when the review process is as flawed as it seems to be in this case (poor communication, inconsistent policies, etc).